James Bond Portrait Gallery

Administrative

It took a while, but finally 007’s creator is getting a little attention during the 50th anniversary year of the cinematic James Bond.

On April 29, Eon Productions conducted a press conference in Istanbul. It was almost six months after the early November press conference to kick off filming of the 23rd James Bond movie. Fleming, without whom the “Bond wagon” of the past half century would not be possible, hasn’t been mentioned much. Sam Mendes, the director of Skyfall, spent some time talking about the author of the original Bond stories.

“You always go back to the Fleming because the character Fleming created over a number of novels was incredibly complex,” Mendes said Sunday at a news conference in Istanbul, where the crew of “Skyfall” has filmed.

“Some people sometimes forget in the cliche of Bond, which is the international playboy, and someone who’s always untroubled, and almost never breaks a sweat, that actually what (Fleming) created was a very conflicted character,” said Mendes, who was joined by cast members, including Bond actor Daniel Craig.

Until now, we’ve heard how wonderful Daniel Craig is, how wonderful Sam Mendes is, how wonderful Barbara Broccoli is. We’ve heard catchphrases like “Bond with a capital B” and “the money’s all up on the screen.” But we’ve heard very little about the author who actually created James Bond and whose tales were adapted, relatively faithfully, for five of the first six movies of the film series.

Could this be manipulative? Perhaps. Craig talks in 2012 about he “reread Ian Fleming” when he said IN 2008 that Fleming titles mean “very little.” That suggests Craig perhaps didn’t read the Fleming stories that closely where titles such as Live And Let Die, From a View to a Kill and Octopussy were explained.

Even if that’s the case, it doesn’t matter. Without Fleming, none of this is possible. Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman would be forgotten movie producers. Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli might have been successful, but probably not as movie producers. Sean Connery, Roger Moore and other James Bond actors wouldn’t be quite as famous as they’d end up being.

It remains to be seen whether Skyfall will be true to Ian Fleming. And, as we’ve noted before, being true to Fleming has multiple interpretations. But, at least for one day, a long-dead author got a little recognition in an anniversary year that wouldn’t have been possible without him.

The Skyfall cast and crew conducted a press conference in Instanbul today. Shortlist magazine sent out updates on its TWITTER FEED. Shortlist quotes director Sam Mendes as saying the 23rd James Bond film will be both “traditional” and “personal.” Here’s the tweet:

Sam Mendes

Director Sam Mendes: “I’m making a film that’s both a traditional Bond film, but also one that’s very personal to me.” #skyfall

Shortlist quotes star Daniel Craig as saying, “Bond is as funny as hell in this movie,” compared with Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

In Fleming’s last novels, Mendes said, Bond suffered from a “combination of lassitude, boredom, depression, difficulty with what he’s chosen to do for a living, which is to kill. That makes him a much more interesting character, and some of those things are explored in this movie, because Daniel as an actor is capable of exploring them.”

Based on the AP story, this Skyfall event may have had the most mentions of 007 creator Ian Fleming. The author, who died in 1964, just as Bond mania was approaching its peak, hasn’t gotten much attention so far in publicity for the movie.

UPDATE II: The Huffington Post is running this same AP story on its ENTERTAINMENT PAGE. The teaser to entice you to click (as of 11:15 p.m. ET)? “James Bond Gets `Depressed’ in `Skyfall'”

April 29 is the 99th birthday of Norman Felton. Without Felton, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. would never come to be.

Fifty years ago, Felton pursued an escapist television show that would eventually be pitched as “James Bond for television.” Felton had been involved in a number of television series, including Dr. Kildare, based on a series of MGM movies.
In October 1962, Felton conducted meetings in New York with Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Fleming’s participation would be brief but his contributions included the hero’s name, Napoleon Solo. Another character name from Fleming, April Dancer, would be used for the spinoff series, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.. Felton eventually engaged a writer-producer named Sam Rolfe (1924-1993) to flesh out the concept of a multi-national security organization, a sort of United Nations of spies. Rolfe created the character of Illya Kuryakin.

The Felton-Rolfe project became reality in the fall of 1964, under the title The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and with Robert Vaughn and David McCallum playing Solo and Kuryakin. The original title was to have been Solo. Eon Productions, which produced the James Bond film series, cried foul (well, sued), saying that Mr. Solo was a character in Fleming’s Goldfinger novel. There was little in common between U.N.C.L.E.’s Napoleon Solo, a dashing secret agent, and Goldfinger’s Mr. Solo, a Mafia leader. So, the lawsuit that Eon filed was settled and the series renamed. (Eon later got a measure of revenge by making sure its Solo character died a memorable death in Goldfinger.)

Both Norman Felton and Sam Rolfe (along with future movie director Richard Donner) made cameo appearances in the The Giuoco Piano Affair, the seventh episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Below is a link to the end tiles to that episode (embedding was disabled for the video, so if you click below, there’s a link to watch it on the YouTube site). At the 0:33 mark, you can see Felton’s executive producer credit and, at the far left of the screen, Felton himself portraying a chess player at the far left of the screen. Happy birthday, Mr. Felton.

Empire magazine, promoting its new issue with Skyfall star Daniel Craig on the cover, has a short article with comments from Sam Mendes where the director confirms the movie will get into Bond’s background. While not a huge surprise, there’s this passage about the audience can expect:

Mendes also adds that Skyfall will see 007 “physically pushing himself” and says that he takes the character “to another level where Daniel isn’t just playing things he’sdone before, where we felt we were pushing — I have to say this in a way that’s not giving too much away — the personal history of the character.”

Still, it’s the first quote we’ve seen from one of the Skyfall principals that addresses the issue of how the 23rd 007 movie will explore the character’s history. It hasn’t come up much in previous films. GoldenEye had a passing reference to how Bond was an orphan, for example.

Paramount is still interested in a serious Matt Helm movie, according to Web site of The Hollywood Reporter.

In A STORY THIS WEEK, there was this nugget from an interview with Adam Goodman, president of Paramount Film Group:

Goodman faces his share of challenges as Paramount looks to make up for the defection of Marvel movies to Disney and the possible end of its relationship with DreamWorks Animation in December. Sitting down with THR recently in his spacious, bright corner office on the Melrose lot, he revealed that Tom Cruise likely is close to signing a deal to star in a Top Gun sequel and that Ehren Kruger has returned to write Transformers 4, even as Shia LaBeouf exits. He also disclosed that he’s moving ahead with franchise hopefuls Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Matt Helm, Earthseed, J.J. Abrams’ Micronauts and Without Remorse. (emphasis added)

No additional details about the Helm project, to be based on Donald Hamilton’s 27 published novels from 1960 to 1993. This is essentially the first whisper of any movement in three years. Back AT THAT TIME, there was talk that Steven Spielberg might be interested in producing, Gary Ross in directing and Bradley Cooper in starring.

None of that, obviously, happened. Spielberg has had multiple movies subsequently while Ross had a mega-hit with The Hunger Games. Cooper’s name surfaced as, for a time, the leading contender to play Napoleon Solo in a movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. but that evaporated in the latest chapter of the U.N.C.L.E. curse.

Earlier this week, Sony Corp. representatives said at a CinemaCon event in Las Vegas that it plans to release Bond 24, the next 007 film after Skyfall, in 2014. (See THIS MI6 007 FAN WEB SITE STORY which was the basis of posts on various Web sites)

The announcement about a year-and-a-half after Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, which controls half of the 007 franchise, said in a bankruptcy filing it wanted to restore 007 movies to an every-other-year schedule starting in 2012 as part of its reorganization plan. Both this year’s Skyfall and Bond 24 call for Sony to release the Bond films in a deal with MGM.

So, Bond fans can count on another 007 films two years after Skyfall comes out this fall, right? Hang on a minute.

We have yet to hear Eon Productions, which controls the other half of the 007 franchise, weigh in on the subject. Sony can’t release a Bond film unless Eon makes one. This is the same Eon Productions whose co-boss, Michael G. Wilson, has complained for years about the rigors of makes James Bond films.

Is Eon on board with making Bond 24 in time for a 2014 release? Maybe it is, but nobody knows at this point.